or they were the agent of a foreign power. in the caseofal-qaedaandthe taliban if you could show that an individual was a member of al-qaeda or taliban then there may be some legal grounds to detain them and try them as an enemy combatant rather than in federal court. but this is masked in legal clothing. it's not actually a legal argument, and we shouldn't confuse these two things. the argument they're making is we should presume from the beginning that any incident involving islamic militancy is some how tied into al-qaeda. as i said, i've done research on this region and this particular conflict for 15 years. while the militants in chechnya have adopted al-qaeda ideology the connection is very slim and they have very different objectives that are very local very parochial and have a lot of to do with russia and very little to do with the united states. >> john: i agree and you're characterizing that as a political approach is profoundly diplomatic. scholar and attorney, christopher swift, thank you for coming tonight. >> thank you. >> john: thank you. one good thing may come o

from an on line magazineanal-qaedalinkedpublication, but how many people know how to put together an eye kia piece of furniture from the directions, let alone make a functioning explosive device. i wouldn't be surprised to find he had some training with the handling of explosives overseas. cenk: we don't know yet. it's speculation. i'm against all the warrantless wiretapping, et cetera, but there is one candidate for tracking it's people who read "inspire" magazine, radical muslims to attack, i'd track that one but that's just me. all right so now i want to go to clip a37 here. i want to play this clip from fox news. he's going to blame most muslims for it. i want your reaction. let's watch it together. >> what do hacks do when they're wrong about terror? they cling to relativism. muslim extremism is no different than other extremism but to make it stick you've got to suck at math. muslim versus christian extremism is comparing hurricane katrina to a squirt begun which is why they embrace root causes to attach the response to evil. a lot of people don't fit in and still don't blow

this narrative that it is islamic,jihadist,al-qaeda-type organization.without having any facts. >> stephanie: you know what? it might be. that's the problem. we don't know yet. >> caller: right. for every one time they mention a domestic terrorist organization, they mentioned al-qaeda ten times. and you know, i think that's part of what rush limbaugh does. he gets out in front and he tries to shape the behavior of these major news networks by his ranting and raving and i think that's something we need to be careful of and really as a society, we need to understand. >> stephanie: yeah, that's what i was saying yesterday. he makes this like -- he takes one guy that wrote one thing and says oh, the mainstream media is dying to think this or this. no, "washington post" is one of the only places that rushed to a judgment without having the information. and as it turns out, they were wrong. i'm sorry, "new york post." >> very different. >> very, very different. >> sorry! >> stephanie: all right. one of the doctors at massachusetts general. >> variety of sharp objects we found in their bodies, prob

security committee who right away wants to stir uptheal-qaedatheory.here he is. >> it could end up being someone else but right now it has all of the indicators in every aspect of being an al-qaeda-affiliated attack. >> bill: what's that based on? based on nothing. you know what it is based on? peter king having to get on television. i just think it is time to calm down a little bit. looks it could be but remember oklahoma city was a domestic affect terrorism. the atlanta olympic bombing centennial park was a domestic act of terrorism. this could easily have been one of those. we don't know. is the answer right now. front page of "the washington post," i don't know whether you can see this. but look again at the heavy presence of police officers right there on the scene as this one marathon runner falls to the ground. he was totally uninjured. on the phones, don is calling from nashua, new hampshire. hey, don, good morning. >> caller: good morning, bill. i said it is a sad day in boston history. >> bill: absolutely. in american history. >> are you close by, don? were you close by?

al-qaedahascamps on the other side of the mexican border. and they are being trained to come in and act like mexicans when they are radical islamists. >> remember this is the same guy% who said that -- warned against terror babies where pregnant morts were being put into the united states have baby's send them out to the middle east and then have them come back and bomb our cities. the appeal of loui gohmert is to try to link all of this stuff together but it is really the britters and ziophobes in the party. and he certainly doesn't have a lot of influence. >> michael: i also want to about another strange person mark sanford. the republicans are saying we're not going to spend another dime on this race. he is on his own. his colleague saying i am not going to make a comment. >> he is amazing, you try to sneak back into your house where your wife doesn't want you to be. and the whole story is amazing. at every turn he tries to make a comeback and then blows off his own foot in the process. this is an amazing opening for the democrats and stephen colbert's s

york post" of radio, but the headline is boston bombing suspect posted videoonal-qaedaprophecyon youtube. >> yeah, the older brother, the one that was killed last night, 26 years old, his name was tamerlin tsarnaev. they were both russian-born chef kneeians. the older one was apparently a competitive boxer for a club named team lowell. and he was a member of a team that won the golden globe championship. he had been boxing apparently for almost eight years, and he is quoted as saying that -- in a newspaper article about this mix mixed marshall arts center where he trained, he says that he does [ inaudible ] god said no alcohol. the article that describes him as a devout muslim and he says there are no values anymore and he worries that people can't control themselves. he doesn't usually take his short off because he doesn't want girls to get bad ideas and he is very religious. the loves the movie boreat even though he thinks some of the jokes are too much. he said he would rather fight for the united states than russian in the olympics. so clearly this guy

for that conservative to call in and reach out. congressman king is another one. he is trying to state'sal-qaeda. >>stephanie: he is not alex jones, or some lunatic fringe. he's a united states congressman. >> caller: exactly. that's my point. he is supposed to be responsible. he has been anti-muslim since day one. he's not -- he's not representative of a lot of other people in new york and it's really up setting to have somebody like that -- >> stephanie: jill, no matter what side of the aisle you are on, that's human, because of 9/11, when you hear saudi, you go of course because of patriot's day you look at the connection to tim mcveigh and go, oh, of course. but we don't know. >> i have gut feelings but i'm not expressing them yet. and i want to hear facts not just speculation. and that's what those people on fox news and the "new york post," and others they do that too much. >> for the right-wing there is no terrorism except for islamic terrorism. >> stephanie: yeah. is there going to be as much screaming about the word terror if it turns out to be right-wing domest

-up. surrounded the student that saudi arabiaandal-qaeda. >>you know what's very interesting in this, the saudi national you know, the poor young guys splashed on the front payment in the "new york post," a lot of right wing chatter about a missing brown university student, might have been involved in this. and authorities said absolutely not. look, take a step back. there was an absolute burning desire to find a mideastern guy to be the suspect. and the "new york post" and other conservative outlets like glenn beck, they proved that they'll just make it up. it was such a burning desire to have the story fit the their at this that they wanted. that they were willing and they have the media tools to just start make stuff up and creating their own reality and creating their own parallel universe. where hey, it is a saudi. guess what. we decided it is a saudi. so that's the story we're going to go with because that's the story we want. if you just take a couple of seconds, imagine, you know, thank god glenn beck wasn't around on 9-11. thank god the fox news of today wasn't around on 9-11. thank go